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In one of the local newspapers that I checked last Saturday was another slightly different report about the diamond wedding anniversary of James and Caroline BOXALL (my 2x great-grandparents) of West Dean (near Chichester), Sussex. It included a paragraph which mentioned that one of their 27 children had emigrated.

When visited yesterday by a “Sussex Daily News” representative, Mrs. Boxall was a-tiptoe with anticipation. All her seven surviving children, except a daughter in Alberta, Canada, have promised to visit the tiny cottage snuggling against a wooded slope of the Downs.

Sussex Daily News (Wednesday 15th April 1936)

It occurred to me that I already knew there were descendants of James and Caroline in Canada, but the fact had been pushed to the back of my mind, only now taking on new significance when I actually read it in print.

My first instinct of course was to find out which daughter it was that had emigrated, which didn’t take long as I had pretty much traced all but one of the daughters already. It was Florence Mabel BOXALL, who married Frederick AYRES in 1906.

I found Florence and her two children on a passenger list leaving Southampton on the Ascania bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the 18th December 1913. The problem is that they are crossed out on the list, does this mean they didn’t make the voyage? The only record I have found so far on the other side of the Atlantic is a passenger list for the arrival of the Ausonia at Quebec on the 8th June 1914.

I don’t really know what is happening, my guess is that they took the Ausonia from Halifax to Quebec. Her husband Frederick had probably already made his way to Canada in advance. It is an interesting puzzle, I would like to find out what really happened but I don’t really have the time to investigate it.

Now this is making me feel guilty. I have a mental image in my mind of Florence and her two children and a handful of suitcases standing at the docks at Southampton looking bewildered and lost. I feel I should be helping them make their way across the Atlantic, but I don’t have the time. All I can do is wish them good luck and wave them goodbye.

I know I shouldn’t feel guilty about not following every branch of my family tree, I just don’t have the time at the moment to learn all about the passenger lists and follow the family over to Canada. For now I need to concentrate on what I already know about and that is English resources.

2 Responses to “Free Friday: Leaving them standing at the dock”

Thanks for that little snippet of information. I will bear that in mind when I get around to researching the family. It must have been later in 1911 because he was supposedly still in England for the census earlier in the year.